>I wonder if you exclude "recalls" resolved by software updates, for all cars, where it would rank then?
Why have you put "recalls" in quotes? It gives the impression you think this makes it somehow lesser. The cybertruck, for example, was subject to a recall because the rearview camera wouldn't come up, but the mirrors are insufficient to back the vehicle up safely without the camera.
That's a safety issue, irrespective of whether or not the fix was in software.
The problem is that those issues shouldn't happen on a public road vehicle to begin with. Tesla's approach is shipping beta software to customers, and using them as testers. This is an insidious practice in modern software development, but is criminal when that software is running a 3-ton vehicle, regardless if it can be fixed with an OTA update or not. There are reasons why strict car safety regulations exist. You can't just sell early access cars and fix issues as customers experience them.
Absolutely. It's easy to see that with Volvo - they had their own operating system called Sensus that could only be upgraded at the dealership and you know, maybe it wasn't the flashiest thing but it worked fine. I've owned a car with it for nearly 5 years and it has never crashed for me once or really did anything weird - it's as stable as any automotive software should be imho. And then they swapped over to AOSS(android based) and it's a complete mess, people have been complaining about bugs and crashes literally constantly, and forums are just full of people going "are you on 3.452.123? They fixed that bug in 3.465.234, you need that update" and the updates literally come out every week, but now owners are worried whether an update actually fixes anything or of it makes things worse again. And I 100% blame the OTA updates for this, they just come in fast and thick clearly without the engineering rigor that automotive software should have.
Is AOSP running any of the critical systems that would make the car undrivable or unsafe if it crashed? Or just IVI stuff? If the former that is horrifying.
It's running the infotainment display(the one in the centre of the car) , but not the driver display. Fortunately I've never heard about the driver display crashing while driving, so at least Volvo had the good sense of making sure that is solid - but the infotainment display is known to crash frequently requiring a hard restart(you hold the button under the display for at least 10 seconds then the entire thing reboots), which maybe it's critical but means you can't change any of the climate controls(other than windows demist since it has its own button, thankfully) while the screen reboots.
Correct, the car can function without the infotainment system but you lose conveniences like climate control, the backup camera, and sometimes even audio, which is weird because you get no feedback from the turn signals. It’s not great but not an immediately pulling over kinda thing.
As an embedded software developer: 100% yes. Having a cheap OTA option will always lead to more sloppiness in development; the problem is that this makes it possible and easy to delay "features" in general when software projects are behind schedule (instead of delaying everything), these delayed features/releaes alone are then additional surface for bugs/regressions to slip through testing.
For the manufacturer this is still mainly a win I'd say... possibly even for the customer (because he gets features and fixes faster, at least), even though it sounds bad.
I would argue that often the car or other hardware being delayed is not an option and so you get rushed software anyway, that has to be dealer serviced. We’ve seen that a lot in cars now that they’ve started having non-trivial amounts of software that is expected to multi-task. I don’t even know how many networks your typical EV has, it’s usually at least 4 or 5.
Think about how, even in software, knowing that a physical shipping of a product (CD / Blu-ray) can be updated from "day 1" has led to poor quality releases with last minute patches.
The cost of having to physically recall / resend CDs back in the day meant that what went out had to work. The cost of sloppy software has now been externalised.
Back in the day it was a major milestone for video game projects to "go gold". It meant that the rigorous QA process was passed, and that retail copies were ready to be manufactured. Since that involved significant costs and physical logistics, companies certainly didn't want major bugs shipped at this stage. There were some exceptions, but ultimately this led to much higher customer satisfaction. Removing this "inconvenience" for companies and allowing them to ship updates and fixes at any point is a major reason why most modern game releases are a clusterfuck at day one. They treat it as public betas, and day one customers (or, worse, preorder suckers) are testers and a replacement for a QA process they don't have. It's essentially crowdsourced development. This also allows them to hype the game up to boost initial sales, and then go "oops, sorry" while they finish implementing it. This scam has been pulled numerous times over the past decade+, yet these companies keep doing it because it's profitable and there's no legal accountability for it.
The fact these practices are now seeping into software on which human lives depend is criminal, and should be prosecuted and strictly regulated.
Physical media is almost entirely dead, and will not exist in a few years anyway. So, yeah, the move to digital releases, pervasive DRM, and live service games make preservation difficult.
I hope industry heads realize that they're actively pushing consumers towards piracy. These days you often get a better experience with a pirated game than a legally bought one: it runs better without DRM and doesn't infect your system, you can play it offline, and no license change will take it away from you. At least GOG seems to be the only store giving you DRM-free and offline installers, but not all games are released on it.
Right but physical media is not dead because of consumer demand. PS4 physical games were huge.
In the US there are still a lot of regions where a 50-100 GB download is just not reasonable.
I know console manufacturers hate retail and the used market, and want that sweet direct income. but it would be a powerful brand move to set higher standards for the physical release. I believe Nintendo has gone this direction.
I get it's wrong in cars. But who the hell cares about games? So your game updates after a month with a fix. So what? It's not like you pay for the update.
People who pay for a working game to play probably care. I'm not a gamer but I occassionally will try to pop something in every six months or so. Two hours later after I have to sign in from a controller, update the OS, then update the game I'm over it. I can't say that's all from shitty software development but some of it probably is.
It’s bad business because it gives your most enthusiastic customers the worst experience. It’s good business because it pulls revenue forward and sometimes pulls revenue into higher seasonality.
Those two somewhat offset and you end up with the classic business decision of whether quality is important.
Tell that to your kid this December, when you gift them a new console and a newly released game. Watch the wonderful experience of it taking forever to download a few gigabytes of patches from overloaded servers, and then not starting anyway because auth/billing/DRM/other bullshit server couldn't handle the demand.
Game studios love releasing around Christmas. I'm surprised they're not being held accountable for ruining that holiday for kids year over year.
People say this a lot but there were in fact examples of software being released back before ubiquitous internet patching that were broken.
For example, no copy of Space Station Silicon Valley for the N64 is completable because of a bug that prevents you from collecting the final plot device.
I'd say it's definitely worse now, with nothing meaningful being on the disc you pay $70 being insane.
Like I said, there were some exceptions. But the current state is reversed: most games ship broken/incomplete at launch, and the exceptions are when a game is actually complete and relatively bug-free.
It's not a matter of not relying on patches or updates altogether. The issue is when companies use this as a crutch to offset their shoddy development practices. Or worse: scamming consumers into buying their broken/incomplete game, and then taking years to deliver a stable experience or what they advertised (No Man's Sky, Fallout 76, Cyberpunk 2077, etc.), shutting down (Redfall, The Day Before, etc.), or straight up taking the money and running. Consumers are lucky if they even get their money back. Thankfully most storefronts have decent refund policies, but that's not an excuse.
The saddest thing is that a lot of people either don't care, or end up forgetting about this if companies appear to work hard to ship updates, which is how they eventually gain their good will back. The reputations of studios like Hello Games, CDPR and even Bethesda are practically untarnished despite of their scams, which gives them the freedom to keep doing this.
It sure seems to be that way with pure software products. I'd not be surprised if is the same with embedded software in things like cars if they can be easily updated.
Back in the days before home internet was common I worked at a place that developed software for personal computers. The software was sold in retail stores such as Egghead, CompUSA, etc on floppy or CD.
Management was very insistent on high software quality. If a bug got through that was bad enough that an update to existing customers was needed the only option, aside from the small number of customers who would be able to use a modem to download an update from a dial up BBS, would be for us to mail them a floppy or CD with the update.
Even minor bugs that could be easily worked around by the customer were bad, because we had no means of contacting our customers except by writing or calling those who had filled out and returned in the prepaid registration card that was in the box when they bought the software. Instead what would happen is they would call our toll free support line.
Remember, this was not a subscription service. It's a one time purchase. If someone needs a long support call to solve a problem that could easily wipe out all profit made on that customer and more.
This wasn't just about bugs. If they had trouble using some feature due to poor UI or inadequate documentation that also meant calls to the toll free support line and so management also was very insistent on clear, well written, comprehensive documentation.
Compare to today. Updates are easy, you can have FAQs and searchable support articles on your website, someone will make a Reddit group where your customers can help each other, there will be bloggers and YouTubers posting tricks and solutions that in the old days would have been in the manual, and no one expects everything to work in any given release.
Its not just car manufacturers, ever since SW stopped shipping in CDs the pressure to just ship and fix it with a patch has permeated everywhere. If there was no further opportunity to fix later I wonder would the Boeing issues have been as prevalent.
I'm not sure I agree. From the perspective of a customer, not being able to drive the car due to it being unsafe is the part that matters, not where and how the manufacturer has to fix it.
If you're opposed to it based on the assumption that it wouldn't take as long, I agree that might be true, but by that logic we should be categorizing _all_ recalls based on length (regardless of whether it's a software update or otherwise), since I'm not convinced that the average length of time until a problem is fixed will always be perfectly split with the software ones being super quick and the ones that would need to happen in person being super slow. What if the mechanics are already aware of how to fix the issue and can do it the same day, or if the software issue turns out to take a long time due to the developers needing a lot of time to fix the bug?
If you're opposed to it purely from the perspective of linguistics and "recall" sounds like "return to the manufacturer", I think I'd disagree due to the word "recall" not being super commonly used for that in other circumstances. If anything, the other usage of the word that springs to mind most readily to me is recalling someone or something "from service", which I think fits perfectly here.
It still doesn't sound right to me. Sure we can get adapted to the new meaning of the term as time goes on, but to me the term has strong implications to physically bring it back, and it is weird that people are claiming that it doesn't.
Surely this causes a lot of confusion at the very least people thinking those vehicles actually have to be brought back.
And the word "Email" has strong implications to actually putting a piece of paper in an envelope with stamp, and physically delivering it to their mailbox. But the world adapted and survived the change in the strong implications of the word "mail", somehow, and continues to turn on its axis.
Recall is the act of officially summoning someone or something back to its place of origin. A product recall is defined as a request to return, exchange, or replace a product after a manufacturer or consumer watch group discovers defects that could hinder performance, harm consumers, or produce legal issues for the producers.
and
A product recall is a request from a manufacturer to return a product after the discovery of safety issues or product defects that might endanger the consumer or put the maker or seller at risk of legal action. Product recalls are one of a number of corrective actions that can be taken for products that are deemed to be unsafe.
It specifically says "request to return."
It's very important because the word "recall" to me is rather about the cost to the business and consumer rather than severity of an issue or it being specifically safety issue.
Recall could be something that is done as a response to a safety issue, but recall could be done for some other reasons as well. E.g. the product could not just be performing as well, but not be a safety issue. There's a defect that means product lifetime will be limited, etc.
I did, just to be safe, once again look up the legal definition of recall (both in regard to cars and other products) and continue to find that it was never written in a way that would make OTA not fit the term. It isn't limited to vehicles, but extends even to perishables for which a physical return directly to the manufacturer is not expected even using a more liberal interpretation of the word.
Here, this is what recall, in this context means:
> A recall is issued when a manufacturer or NHTSA determines that a vehicle, equipment, car seat, or tire creates an unreasonable safety risk or fails to meet minimum safety standards. Most decisions to conduct a recall and remedy a safety defect are made voluntarily by manufacturers prior to any involvement by NHTSA.
> Manufacturers are required to fix the problem by repairing it, replacing it, offering a refund, or in rare cases repurchasing the vehicle.
OTA falls under that. Can you perhaps find some source saying the contrary somewhere on the internet (just like one can find numerous sources proclaiming the earth to be flat)? Yes.
Does that change the legal definition as it has been in place for decades? No.
And if you want to fully ho by whatever some random person may believe recall to mean, then does that mean that product recalls for produce, milk, etc. do not exist according to you, because the item isn’t necessarily interfacing with the manufacturer again, but may just get disposed?
That was my point. If people feel this definition should be changed, more power to them, but arguing that OTA have as of yet not been covered by the definition is just dishonest.
I'd be partial to calling these recalls something akin to "Mitigating unreasonable safety issue", but I feel that for some reason, some people may feel compeled to argue that this wouldn't be fair to Tesla either, no matter how dangerous or forseeable a fault might be.
It’s not dishonest to not want to call something that is not a recall a recall.
You might note that while the definition presented doesn’t explicitly exclude over the air updates, it also didn’t explicitly include them. Very likely because it was written before they were a thing.
In my opinion this definition of the recall uses the original definition, and people are now saying that since an OTA update is not specifically precluded from being a recall under this definition, surely that must be part of the original meaning of the word (which the parent comments have already established is incorrect).
Yeah, the argument is about the legal definition being misleading and confusing and what should be changed, because of the bias and meaning of the word "recall". The fact that most google results will imply physical return of the product is evidence of popular definition and legal definition diverging. In addition the word inherently implies bring it back because of the "re". It doesn't imply "there's a safety issue that needs to be addressed".
> some people may feel compeled to argue that this wouldn't be fair to Tesla either, no matter how dangerous or forseeable a fault might be.
Also the point isn't about whether it's fair to Tesla or not. I don't care about Tesla here. It could be any manufacturer, point is that it makes it seem like it's a financial and logistical nightmare to come, but clicking on headline, it's just a software update.
Of course by now, I've personally seen this in headlines many times and grown indifferent, but it occurs to me still every time.
In my native language the term "recall" has even stronger implications of physical return, it means "call to bring it back". It sounds even more bizarre than in English for a software update.
> [...] point is that it makes it seem like it's a financial and logistical nightmare to come, but clicking on headline, it's just a software update.
If we go by what "it seem[s] like" (to a layperson), we could reasonably argue that the word (scientific) "theory" should be changed because a significant part of the populus confuses that with the definition of hypothesis.
This also, again, ignores that, long before OTA was a thing for cars, the logistics behind recalls for items ranging from meat, over mattresses, to medical equipment, etc. differed widely in execution and financial impact, yet again, have all been covered under the same term.
This started because you stated that by considering severe safety issues as recalls we'd have to adapt to a "new meaning", simply because you felt it is weird that OTA addressable safety issues are covered by that, when this has historically been the accepted, commonly used and well worn definition. If you want to change it, than more power to you, but don't claim that yours is the original definition, when it isn't. Especially since terms like these are regulated to ensure companies cannot weasel around them.
> In my native language the term "recall" has even stronger implications of physical return, it means "call to bring it back".
German? If we go purely by the literal definition of words, then I'd question why no one ever saw fit to complain that a recall/Rückruf rarely contains an actual call (or shout in the case of German) to the customers affected.
Add to that, is it really reasonable to just point at the most literal definition a, both well established and for good reasons regulated, word has? One that, again, has been in use for decades across many product types where the remedy was not having to bring the item to a garage for a fix to get wrenched on?
Idiomatic expressions exist, I hope deadlines aren't taken literally at any modern workplace.
Nilpferd also sounds bizarre considering they are closer to whales than horses, evolutinary speaking, yet we somehow manage, so I feel Rückruf isn't even close to the worst offender in that regard.
Not German. Okay, from other side of the view. Why not change it? It's clearly confusing a lot of people, and with such an important topic, where people would have to pay attention.
> but don't claim that yours is the original definition, when it isn't. Especially since terms like these are regulated to ensure companies cannot weasel around them.
I'm not claiming it's an original definition. It's just a very confusing and misleading term, that gets used in odd ways.
Someone in here suggested "Public Dangerous Defect Notice". Doesn't have to be this, but what about something similar?
In general, I think trying to replace a word gets increasingly hard the longer the replacement is than the original (in terms of letters for writing and syllables for speaking). I have a hard time imagining people being bothered enough by the current term to be willing to say something four times as long (or using five times as many characters-worth of space on the page in an era where online news is already struggling to keep people's attention).
Is there no difference between a software "recall" and a software update?
I'm imagining (uneducated guess) that the software is updated more often than it is recalled, and so a "recall" is an update that addresses a safety issue.
Specifically speaking on software and tesla most/all recalls are for items that no longer comply with a government rule. No argument, the rules should be followed but I do believe there is a shade of gray as a number of them are imo tail events. They should be fixed but I would not classify them as the car cannot be used because safety is an issue.
"The Boombox function allows sounds to be played through an external speaker while the vehicle is in motion, which may obscure the Pedestrian Warning System (PWS) sounds. As such, these vehicles fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard number 141, "Minimum Sound Requirements for Hybrid and Electric Vehicles"
"A software error may cause a valve in the heat pump to open unintentionally and trap the refrigerant inside the evaporator, resulting in decreased defrosting performance. As such, these vehicles fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard number 103, "Windshield Defrosting and Defogging Systems."
" A factory reset muted the Pedestrian Warning System (PWS) sounds. As such, these vehicles fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard number 141, "Minimum Sound Requirements for Hybrid and Electric Vehicles."
"An incorrect font size is displayed on the instrument panel for the Brake, Park, and Antilock Brake System (ABS) warning lights. As such, these vehicles fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard number 105, "Hydraulic and Electric Brake Systems" and 135, "Light Vehicle Brake Systems."
Outside of these there are a handful of FSD recalls and a couple that are more critical, like rear-view cameras not working due to software. Stating again for the eventual naysayers, all of these absolutely should be fixed but I believe they are shades of gray in terms of how critical they are to safety.
Honestly, some of these read like “Three ton car can be driven into people if the steering wheel is applied in the wrong direction. Constitutes danger to public safety and cannot be used.”
That was my only point too. Tesla has lots of issues and the cyber truck is no stranger to it but most of the recalls people cite are not true safety issues.
Yeah, I think there's a significant difference between "Tesla decided to push a software update to their cars on their own" and "the government said the cars are unsafe, so Tesla was required to push a software update", and that's worth capturing in the language we use to describe those events.
You are aware I said most right? I am responding to the typical Tesla hyperbole. All issues that warrant a recall classification absolutely should be fixed but I would not go as far to say the vehicle should not be used due to safety. I think I can manage even though the font size in the instrument cluster is incorrect.
That's not to say there are not more serious issues like the rear-view camera that did not work for specific models/software version combos.
My model y has had a number of recalls and I never knew about it. From things to the UI not meeting government requirements to other software issues. It was never unsafe to drive.
Have you even looked at the recall list or are you just spewing the usual Tesla hyperbole? Recalls should be fixed regardless but the vast majority of Tesla recalls are not base case safety fixes. Sure they comply with a government rule for some tail case but hardly the earth shattering situation where the car sits unable to drive because it’s unsafe. Font sizes, boom box drowning out the pedestrian noise…all kinds of things. Hence why I said every recall that I have gotten was not a true safety item. Unless you have experience or facts stop with the hyperbole.
Recall is the industry-standard (and populace-understood) term for “this vehicle has a safety or reliability issue that must be resolved by the manufacturer.” It is all encompassing; anything from possibly loose lugnuts to faulty airbags to engine failures to yes, the reverse camera failing to appear. It doesn’t matter if the manufacturer ships an OTA update, shows up at your house with a loaner and a flatbed to take your car, or requires you to go into the dealership for service, it’s a recall.
It might be industry-standard term, but it’s certainly not understood that way by layman, including car customers. To the public, “recall” will always carry the implication that the vehicle needs to go back to the manufacturer for a fix.
I don't think that's true. Most people are accustomed to there being many "recalls" for trifling matters which can be simply ignored until maybe the next time they bring the car into the shop. A typical conversation about recalls:
> "I changed your oil, and I also replaced one of your door seals because there was a recall for the rubber cracking in cold weather"
> "Oh, okay."
It doesn't colloquially imply that the manufacturer is going to come take your car due to some major issue.
Maybe for you? All the recall notices I’ve ever seen are of the “Device may electrocute you if used improperly” variety. Those were definitely very strong suggestions to immediately discontinue use and get a replacement.
Maybe this is one of those situations where the US uses this term differently from the rest of the world? In a way that waters the term down so much that it might as well be meaningless?
>Recall is the industry-standard (and populace-understood) term for “this vehicle has a safety or reliability issue that must be resolved by the manufacturer.”
Exactly. But not just for vehicles or other durable goods. We see recalls of all sorts of food products[0] pretty regularly, and no one has to bring their carrots or ground beef back to the store/manufacturer to "remediate" the issue. Rather, you just throw it away.
And such activities are unfailingly called recalls.
There’s been recalls over paint, watertight seals, etc issues that impact a vehicle’s lifespan. Generally the kind of thing a company fixes not to be sued, or just cheaply maintain a solid reputation.
There’s also a “safety recall” system run by NHTSA, which is what most people think of by recall. Which then has a bunch of reporting requirements so people who aren’t taking their cars to the dealership still get notified.
If I have a flat tyre it's not a recall. Not everything about not being road-legal and requiring immediate action is a recall. That's a bad definition.
It wasn't a definition. The person you replied to used "means" in the sense of "necessarily implies", not in the sense of "is precisely equivalent to". That's what the symbols in my earlier comment meant.
E.g.
> "Murder" is a legal term, it means the act was premeditated.
Somebody who says that is not claiming that all premeditated acts are murder.
Note that many recalls have nothing to do with legality to drive or immediate action.
Last time I took my car in they handled two recalls: the bracket for the spare tire could crack (mine wasn’t) and a floor drain plug was the wrong size.
Very few recalls are urgent or prohibit the car from being g driven.
> "recall" is a legal term, it means the vehicle is not road-legal and requires immediate action
No it doesn't. Sometimes it does, but certainly not always.
I drive a Ford Everest (SUV version of the Ranger). It has an open recall at the moment for a software issue where if you obstruct the power windows while they're closing, they may not detect the obstruction and stop automatically.
I can continue to drive the vehicle, I just need to get the issue rectified when I next get it serviced.
It might be the correct technical term, but general interest publications like Wired should avoid jargon that confuses laypeople, especially in headlines.
Because the term "recall" often technically means "issue that put public safety at risk". But would you want that spelled out every time if you were a marketer?
Because car industry regulations haven't caught up with cars being software on wheels yet. Most regulations in general haven't caught up with software eating the world and the "move fast and break things" mentality. This is not just an arguably bad mentality, but when human lives are at stake, it's a very dangerous one as well.
Besides, companies the size and influence of Tesla can lobby their way out of regulations. With Musk now becoming more politically involved, it's doubtful we'll see any of this change in the next 4 years at least.
This is a point which comes up regularly when discussing right to privacy laws (hello EU). Startup culture wants to move fast and break things - including my bones in this case - while evil regulations only come in the way of progress.
> Startup culture wants to move fast and break things - including my bones in this case - while evil regulations only come in the way of progress.
All car companies comply with thousands of regulations, and it's fine. If you have a simple view of the world, I don't think inverting it and claiming the people you think are the baddies hold that inverted view is going to get anyone closer to understanding anything.
It's not just Tesla. All the online services you depend on are run this way, and none of it's regulated. Governments don't know how to regulate software companies like Tesla. They know how to regulate people constructing homes, cooking food, and building bridges but most attempts at regulating software development have petered out. This is a good thing. Thanks to Tesla's modern approach to car manufacturing it is now possible for anyone in the middle class to purchase a self-driving bulletproof truck that's faster than a Lamborghini. You can't make this stuff up. I swear.
Why do Tesla people see servitization and paying for something in perpetuity forever as being such an enabling thing for people? We need to own the things we pay for, not rent them. In a decentralized way. A car is a machine that needs to be capable of functioning completely independent of everything else. There is no reason it should be a PaaS other than to extract as much value out of the market as possible.
Companies need to leave some value for regular people to live.
If Tesla is a software company rather than a car company, then did you also consider Wework one rather than office rentals? Honestly interested why their, as of now, main product shouldn’t define the type of company they are.
Was it MKBHD who made some weird claim that he spoke to a bunch of people, "most of whom thought the cyber truck was closer to $1M and were amazed to hear it was more like $100K"?
I have NEVER heard that. It makes zero sense and sounds more like the fever dream of a Teslarati: "Wow, I know the median home price in my area is $500K, and the median household income $80K, but all of a sudden there is this explosion of million dollar Teslas on the road!"
You can apparently lease a Cybertruck starting at $1000/month. That is definitely within range for someone on a 90k income, even if it is isn't the most financially smart thing you can do.
I need to ask - is this a joke? No, Tesla is not particularly bulletproof compared to other cars. Its doors may stop a 9mm sure enough, but the windows won't manage even that, and anything above 9mm will go through the doors as well. And 9mm is not even that common among criminal shooters, they usually go for bigger calibers / higher penetration naturally already.
All of my Tesla updates have been production updates. All software has bugs, and Tesla is one of the most innovative and responsible software companies. Compare that to Microsoft, for example. Or Oracle. Lots of their software runs medical systems that are mission critical.
How about the latest Palo Alto networks vulnerability? Lots of critical infrastructure behind their firewalls.
All in all, I'd say Tesla is among the top on software and hardware engineering, and I'd hire any of their engineers in a heartbeat.
> You can't just sell early access cars and fix issues as customers experience them.
But then how will you know what you HAVE to fix. /s
To be frank I find the whole Tesla cult to be mind blowing. Seems to be the realization of believing in something that seems so good to be true alwith a company who promises to do so many great things, delivers non road worthy vehicles and people still dedicate their time and money defending them.
Is it sunk cost fallocy? Or just people who just wish Tesla was what they promised they would be?
If you remember how some kids in school argued over which gaming consoles were best or whichever Transformer would win over another. I think it is the same concept 'fanboyism' among those Tesla apologists.
Of which sunk cost were a huge thing. Your parents bought you only one...
I think recall in quotes because the original meaning of recall was that you had to return (recall) the thing to the shop so that it could be fixed. Like when the brakes might fail and I have to schedule an appointment to bring my car into the shop for a week seems different from pushing out a software fix to adjust the AC temperature or whatever. It seems more like an "update" like when Apple pushes out a fix to the iPhone. They call that an update, not an iPhone recall. (However, your camera example does sound like a major issue.)
Well, the OED definition of 'recall' is "official order to return to a place" and a software update or fix requires no return to the place of purchase. I wonder how may legally defined 'recalls' Microsoft Windows has experienced with each new version.
I think the gist is "recall" is the same saying "safety issue that needs to be fixed in the software or hardware" since we don't have a word for software issues, which carry a bit more weight on a fly-by-wire vehicle like the Cybertruck.
Interesting to note that this thread seems to be full of a lot of people choosing to be pedantic over the word "recall" rather than taking a critical look at the Cybertruck and it's issues. While I agree that language is important (and dynamic), I suspect that discussion around this vehicle is also charged by politics and sycophantic thinking.
If I remove my personal opinions about Musk, I find that I actually do not hate the Cybertruck. Sure, I think it looks absolutely stupid and it bothers me that the flat paneling does not line up perfectly, but I am also cheering on it's attempts to break some rules, try something different and possibly spark some future innovation. With that in mind, it's easy for me to expect that it will have problems since anything new that breaks the mold tends to, so with that reframing, a lot of recalls make sense and could even be looked at as good since solutions are being developed.
People are pedantic over this because they have a strong association from their past with this term and now it is being used unexpectedly. No matter how bad Tesla's issue might be, then maybe a different wording has to be used to highlight the issue. As right now it seems as if when the term is used it is almost intentionally made to seem as if the vehicle has to be physically transported back which would be a logistical and financial disaster. Sure, safety issues can be bad, but it is entirely different level of feasibility of physically recalling back all those vehicles. Why are people pretending it is not?
The whole issue is a spectrum of consequences. Right now it seems that the term used confusingly is always justified because the issue is binarily bad in the first place.
> Interesting to note that this thread seems to be full of a lot of people choosing to be pedantic over the word "recall" rather than taking a critical look at the Cybertruck and it's issues.
Being pedantic over a single word out of 100 is HN's bread and butter. How many times have you read a comment here that boiled down to "The author's entire article is invalid because in paragraph 3, word 65 he used the wrong word!"
Bonus points when the poster is himself also wrong about the meaning of the word, as is the case in this thread where people don't know what a "recall" is in the automotive world.
I suppose that is probably true, but I hate to generalize...then again, I am guilty of generalizing and being pedantic, myself.
We do kind of exist in a strange space where the meaning and intention of words matter for the sake of clarity, but to ignore the dynamic nature of language results in less clarity. If that makes any sense?
I think the 'pedantry' is actually trying to push back against the politics and whatnot, in a way.
As others have noted, 'recall' brings to mind physically returning an item. I have, repeatedly, had to clarify to people that it was actually an OTA software update, which - to most people - is a lot less significant than the idea of having to return your car several times a year.
They are called recalls because that’s what the term for legalisation mandates. They are issued when a vehicle is unsafe to drive and they are mandated because a manufacturer is required to take a lot of steps to remedy their failure. If they fail to repair the issue they are forced to issue full refunds as an example.
So no, the word recall is used because is the official terminology used for these issues regardless of the solution required to fix them.
The word does have its origin in a world where solutions were rarely software updates. That they are software issues make them no less serious though. I suspect that in some cases the software issues might indeed be far more dangerous than errors which mandate physical recalls.
The important part is the legal obligation to produce a safe product.
If that doesn't happen there are legal consequences.
The fact that software is involved changes exactly nothing. And honestly - the entire industry needs to get over the bizarre belief that software has a magical right to be less performant, less competent, less reliable, less robust, and more consumer hostile than hardware, just because it can be updated.
At the very least, it puts the quality control of Tesla in question, as those are failures which should have been caught PRIOR to a commercial launch.
Tesla is treating its product-launches like it's just some browser-game in the cloud, instead of treating it as what it is: The handover of a 6000 pound bullet into the hand of a customer who will fire it into a crowd in expectation to not hit anyone...
A recall is about the issue, not how it's resolved. A recall means there are some serious security flaws that needs fixing. Even if they can be fixed OTA, they're still a flaw, and Tesla has had many of those.
Couldn't agree more. Recall means "sufficiently dangerous to need to recall the vehicle to the manufacturer" - yes, in the modern world it can be fixed OTA, but it's still dangerous enough to require a mass fix to a fast-moving death machine.
Maybe, to eliminate ambiguity (and make it sound cooler), they should call it a "roadworthiness directive", similar to "airworthiness directive" for aircraft. Of course airworthiness directives are issued by the authorities (the FAA in the US), while "recalls" are from the manufacturers, but still...
Maybe Tesla doesn't deserve to have the world redefined around them to make their products look less shit?
This conversation happens every single time Tesla produces a product that is legally unsafe. We keep having this conversation because Tesla keeps making an unsafe product.
The word recall sort of implies that the vehicle is recalled to the manufacturer. Calling a software update that happens in your garage at night and takes 20 minutes a “recall” definitely is worthy of quotes.
The word bug sort of implies that the device was struck by a terrestrial arthropod animal. Calling a software defect that happens due to a programming error a "bug" definitely is worthy of quotes.
(The etymology of a word can be quite different from its current meaning today.)
Focusing on the dictionary definition of the word "recall" seems pedantic.
Not all recalls are for big mechanical problems. I've received several recall notices for issues that just required the dealership to flash the ECU or some other controller with new firmware. Whether that update is flashed OTA or with a special dongle at the dealership doesn't really make a difference if you're looking at it from the perspective of vehicle safety/reliability/stability. The point is that a recall is a significant enough issue that the manufacturer _must_ notify their customers about it.
I agree that if you count _every_ OTA update as a recall, you can't really do an apples-to-apples comparison. The cost of pushing an OTA update is much lower than the cost of a recall, so Tesla probably pushes a bunch of minor OTA updates that other manufacturers wouldn't bother with. But it's a fair comparison if only some subset of OTA updates are counted as recalls (i.e. updates addressing a safety issue).
> The word recall sort of implies that the vehicle is recalled to the manufacturer.
It does not, no more than gaslighting implies lighting a gas lamp or the phrase crossing the Rubicon implies actually crossing a river in Italy, in any case. It hasn't meant anything of that sort since the mid-sixties.
Recall is what legislation requires you to call it if something is unsafe for public use and it has to be withdrawn for the market until it's remedied. It doesn't matter how that's done. The NHTSA guidelines don't include physically getting the product to a manufacturer or a distributor as a requirement to issue, or as a criteria for fulfillment, of a recall. (I don't think recall guidelines in any industry do, it's just the NHTSA's that apply in this case).
Yes, this also applies for firmware upgrades. No, it doesn't matter where they're performed. The FDA has issued firmware-related recalls for devices with programmable logic since programmable logic in medical devices was a thing so like... fourty years. If anyone in some company's safety staff just learned about that's let's all please give them a warm welcome to the 20th century.
The main reason why recalls typically involve returning the product to the manufacturer (or, more often, as the vast majority of recalls are for food, medicine or cosmetics, to the distributor) is traceability. Manufacturers need to maintain documentation that shows they took reasonable action to notify all customers, that depending on how they chose to handle it they made repairs for free, replaced them for free, or that the refund they issued made reasonable allowances for depreciation, and so on. Some foodstuffs or medicine also have disposal safety rules that require you to maintain adequate documentation as well. It's just the easiest way to deal with it, both in terms of remedying the actual issue, and in terms of legal risk.
But it's got nothing to do with returning something to the factory, it hasn't meant anything of that sort in like half a century.
Once again, an intelligent post such as yours has been lazily downvoted simply because somebody doesn't agree with it, and they can't be arsed composing a coherent rebuttable. This leads to unpopular ideas being buried, groupthink and a lack of intelligent discourse.....
....And yes, this IS leading to this place becoming more and more Reddit like (no, that isn't a tired cliché, no matter what the FAQs claim).
Downvoting needs to be reserved for comments that detract from the conversation. At this rate, we will need some form of meta moderation to ensure this happens.
> Downvoting needs to be reserved for comments that detract from the conversation.
I understand where you're coming from but truth is a post like that one does detract from the usual excusemaking conversation that some companies enjoy here, so I'm not surprised it was downvoted :-). It's one of the many ways in which karma points killed online discourse. I just happen to be old enough to have racked up a lot of pre-karma posting (including, of course, flamewars, what would life be without spice?) so downvotes don't really register on my radar.
If you think about the financial implications then probably yes. Software issues, safety related or not, can probably easily be fixed OTA and thus don’t even cause a fraction of the costs a (let’s call it "real") recall costs.
Also, in the head of most people, I think, a recall is something where the car needs to be returned physically. But still, obviously, the issues can be as serious as physical issues. It’s just that we’re used to physical recalls.
Getting an OTA software update to your vehicle is far less disruptive to your life than having to take it in to the dealer. Obviously safety issues shouldn't happen, but how easy they are to fix also matters.
"Recall" is wording that means (to me) the vehicle needs to be physically returned to a dealer workshop for something to be done.
That it's used for OTA updates just (to me) means they should use some more suitable wording for it. And yeah, as other people have pointed out it's the word used for the legislation. I still think they should use some kind of different wording though.
>The cybertruck, for example, was subject to a recall because the rearview camera wouldn't come up, but the mirrors are insufficient to back the vehicle up safely without the camera.
Every vehicle since 2018 has been required to have one for safety. No car or truck is sufficiently safe without one.
Well, "recall" implies both a safety issue and a convenience issue. Pre-Tesla OTA updates a "recall" was a logistical nightmare, meaning you had to take the day off work, wait at the dealership all day, sometimes deal with a loaner car, etc.
To a lot of folks, maybe older than the average HN user at this point, the reason recalls were such a hated thing was not primarily that it implied a safety defect, but because they were super inconvenient.
For example, I had a recall on my Tesla having to do with the automatic window closing being dangerous. That is a safety issue, and I do have kids, so I realize that there's a very small chance they could damage or lose a finger with it, so I do want it fixed. But because it was fixed OTA, I don't really mind it or hold it against them. In contrast, if fixing it meant taking it into a dealership and losing a day, it would be a hugely negative thing! I ascribe a negative sentiment to the fact that there was a safety issue in proportion to the chance of damage and how severe it was, so: minor.
In other words, I know why it's called a "recall" and it makes sense. But on the other hand, you have to realize why people put it in scare quotes, too. The plain denotation of the word hasn't changed, but the connotation is really disproportionate to the experience of someone with a Tesla.
I suspect that’s a bit of an exaggeration by the author. If the mirrors were not required by law and therefore comply with the law they wouldn’t exist. “The best part is no part”
Yeah the cost is negligible if you are already planning to have a screen running chrome on Ubuntu server, but I hope it was still an option not to have that.
Uh no. Pretty much every single backup camera on every single vehicle is the exact same little module that produces analog video and literally just runs a component cable to the head unit which has a standardized analog video input.
Why have you put "recalls" in quotes? It gives the impression you think this makes it somehow lesser. The cybertruck, for example, was subject to a recall because the rearview camera wouldn't come up, but the mirrors are insufficient to back the vehicle up safely without the camera.
That's a safety issue, irrespective of whether or not the fix was in software.